You lack a basic understanding of the function of private property. Yes, liberals implemented regulations on property so that some building that is totally dangerous doesn't catch on fire, or what have you, and burn everyone in side. They do that so that things are up to a certain STANDARD. One cannot be anti-free enterprise and pro-giant corporation. The giant corporations are the end result OF free enterprise. The liberals and the republicans both support that. Anyways, it is still private property, because a private individual owns it and owns the means of production within it. That person is thus profiting at the expense of another person's wage labor. That's private property.
Private property is property which is PRIVATE. That means no one else can say what can be done with it -- period. But we have liberals telling farmers they can't let cows shit in the pastures, that they can't pull the weeds that are poisonous to cows, that they can't put fill in the low spots... telling landowners they can't regravel their roads because they're in a "wetland" -- as defined by some bureaucrat who's never been to the place he's regulating....
Private property is private if the person "owns the means of production within it" -- but that's not the case: they only own the means of production that the liberal regulators decide to let them use, and within the limits they set, and those regulators never give a care for the people they're driving into poverty, out of their means of making a living, out of their homes. But it has nothing to do with "profiting at the expense of another's wage" -- that's anti-free-enterprise rhetoric -- it has to do with being able to do as you wish with your land. If you can't do what you wish, it isn't actually your property. If a farmer can't take his lower pasture and plant trees, if he can't hire a worker and put a house for that worker on a corner of that property, if he can't pull up vegetation that's bad for his livestock, how can you say he has private property? What he has is someone else's land, because someone else is making the rules.
I know the stated purpose of all the regulations, but what I'm interested in are the effects, and the effects tend to be punishing the poor for being poor, and helping make more people drop down to being poor.
As for the giant corporations, they're certainly not the result of free enterprise, they're the result of government meddling in the market. Giant corporations get subsidies and tax breaks no one else does, they get favors from politicians that no one else does -- and they get bailed out when any ordinary company in their position would be allowed to fold.
I don't see how passing regulations "destroys" individualism. Maybe it hinders small business. But that's not "individualism" - you use these terms very loosely. Your point about regulations here is interesting, in terms of the fees outweighing the cost. I would say again, this is a product of capitalism: someone is making a profit. I'm sure that's a pretty volatile example anyways, with the collapse of the housing market and all.
No one is making a profit off all those regulations; the government is sucking up that money and inhibiting the making of a profit. If it weren't for all the extra cost added to houses by the government fees, more people could afford houses, which would mean more work for the construction people and developers, which would mean more profit around. Government NEVER help makes a profit, it only soaks up wealth and inhibits the creation of more.
As for the collapse of the housing market, the examples of those fees are from before the collapse -- the situation is even worse, now, as prices for many building materials have dropped... but fees have actually gone up, just one more example of government employing more people and sucking up more money and producing less in return (cf. Parkinson's law).
I'm sorry, but just because people have to pay for regulations to have their buildings up to date doesn't mean it isn't private property.
"Up to date"?
That concept right there is antithetical to liberty and private property. If it's private, that means the owner decides what to do with it -- and no one else.
If I want to live on a piece of forest land in a log cabin with no insulation and a roof made of raw elk hides, that's my business. And if I have to pay any sort of fee at all for any use of my property, it is obviously no longer private, because someone else is collecting a fee for my use of it.
You're talking from the point of view of small business and, well, the middle of fucking nowhere. Look at Wall Street, look at the major cities in the US and tell me there isn't private property. The corporations and chain stores are the very essence of what private property has lead to. Capitalism inherently concentrates wealth in the hands of the few because of the way the labor theory of value works. Worker A, B, and C work for a small wage that is the portion of the profits and a small portion of the wealth they are producing, for Owner D, who owns the property. Owner D makes all the money. Worker A, B and C go and spend their excess money at other private enterprises owned by other Owner D's. All of their money goes back into the hands of the owner's, the bourgeois class. Then the market eventually crashes because the worker's can't afford to buy the products they produce.
ALL systems concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. It doesn't help when, as we see now, government favors giant corporations.
BTW, wages are not "a portion of the profits", they're an expense.
You're showing yourself to be a bit of a Marxist here.
I'm sorry, but if a couple of rednecks can't park their RV where ever they please so that public places are safe, then so be it. If they are doing that not for your safety, but rather out of some kind of class-loathing for poor people, who are liberals the same ones who support welfare programs, revitalization programs, tax breaks for the poor and taxing the wealthy?
Who said anything about safety?
You want to know what the closing off of public lands to the public comes down to? It's simple: bureaucratic laziness and control. They don't like the idea of people being out there where they can't be regulated and watched, and they don't want to have to exert the effort of actually doing their jobs of checking on people using the land. It's a lot easier to herd them into campgrounds that are too packed to provide relaxation, too badly designed to be good for the environment, and frequently too badly placed to offer much recreation.
It doesn't matter what their stated purpose is, because it's probably a lie. I've seen it over and over; they'll give some reason for doing something, usually environmental... and it never happens, all they do is put up another gate, another ditch across a road. What matters is the result, and the result, over and over, is to punish poor people.
And it makes every bit of sense that this is the same group of people who support welfare programs and such: the more poor they can create, the more they can say their programs are needed, and the more power they can grab.
Again, you demonstrate your massive misunderstanding of capitalism. The people PRODUCING wealth in this country are workers, they are the PRODUCERS. The rich don't produce anything, they merely OWN the means of production, and collect the profits, while everyone else works. Sane wealth distribution would mean taking some of the money that they make from merely OWNING means to profit and giving it, through taxation, to people who work. When people have enough money to actually buy things, that STIMULATES the economy.
Those who produce wealth are those who have the ideas for things that are useful.
You are so deep into Marxist unreality here it's almost unbelievable.
The truly free market is what lead to the opportunity for corporations to get this big in the first place. Corporations were given human rights. They were recognized as people. Since capitalism inherently puts wealth in the hands of a tiny few, this is the obvious result.
You contradict yourself: you speak of a "truly free market" and then you say that "Corporations were given human rights", and then you go talking about capitalism.
Corporations having human rights is NOT an element of the free market, it's a major distortion. In a free market, individuals are responsible for their actions; they can't hide behind some legal fiction. If corporation Q pumps out pollution into a river and people's property and/or health are damaged, they should be able to sue both the employees who dumped the pollution and the people responsible for overseeing them, all the way to the top.
THAT would be a free market.
Are you serious? A minimum wage is a way to insure that workers aren't getting totally fucked over. You should read the Jungle... If you ask me, there should be a goddamn maximum wage.
That's the idea behind a minimum wage, but the result of a minimum wage is that work doesn't get done and people lose jobs.
I'm sorry that you're so selfish that you're against the concept of regulations and probably anything state funded (I happen to like that food is regulated so it is safe, along with other major industries, or that the apartment I live in is up to a decent fire-code, etc.) just because you can't move out into the woods and live in a fucking shack. Give me a break dude. You're the one who needs to take a look at the real world and get your head out of Oregon and look around. Regulations are needed because we have incredibly massive industries and infrastructures that would do whatever the fuck they want, for profit, at the cost of human lives, if they weren't unchecked.
Government regulation of these things is not needed. Ever heard of an outfit called United Laboratories? It's a private entity, no connection to the government, and regulated the quality and safety of manufactures items for decades, better than the government has ever done. The same could be done with every sector of the economy; it doesn't require taxes or bureaucracies.
You have a seriously skewed concept of what "private property" is. First of all, your house isn't private property. That's personal property (a sidenote). Have you ever read a Marxist critique of private property? You keep defending it without realizing it's the very idea that got us where we are today. Private property is theft.
Yes, private property is what got us what we have today: individual liberty and human rights.
I've read the Marxist critiques -- it's useful for comedy, and lining bird cages.
